Sending the wrong signal

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

2/29/12, 9:08 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 9:15 PM CET

Directorate-general for the information society and media lags behind on logos.

A deadline of 1 February for European Commission departments to comply with the uniform use of one Commission-wide logo has passed with no discernible effect on one department that ought to know better.

The approved logo – a stylised depiction of the Berlaymont – has yet to feature on the departmental website of the directorate-general for the information society and media.

Although DG Infso’s website does have a section on “visual identity”, it persists in showing two outdated logos, neither of which comply with the new rules.

The first is “structured around [sic] a perspective and the ideas associated with this: the movement of lines are reminiscent of light beams and this suggests simultaneously diffusion and radiance, transmission and light”.

The second (pictured) is supposed to depict a transmitter – “In order to visually reinforce the theme of the Directorate General, references to the ‘European Commission’ and ‘Information Society and Media’ are shown vertically above the European flag, symbolising a transmitter.”

It is so splendidly corny that it deserves to be broadcast more widely, before it is airbrushed from the Commission archives.